The High Court of Kenya gave judgement on 15 March 2019 on a challenge to the validity of the Kenyan-Mauritius double tax treaty in Tax Justice Network- Africa v Kenya Revenue Authority and others. The petitioners had sought a declaration that the treaty had not been subjected to the ratification of domestic law and the…

The update on tax certainty IMF/OECD Report for the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors published on 22 July 2018 may not have been everyone’s summer holiday reading. This report follows on from the 2017 IMF/OECD Report for the G20 Finance Ministers in March 2017. It should certainly give pause for thought. The “tax…

On 25 September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted the historic resolution Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The agenda calls upon all 193 UN member states to strive to achieve a socially, environmentally and economically sustainable world by 2030. The agenda contains 17 goals and 169 sub-objectives – Sustainable Development Goals…

A world of tax without disputes is an illusion. It is just as much an illusion as a world without tax. Tax and disputes come together inseparably. Disputes is not something to be ashamed of – I say this in particular to authorities. Nor – and it this meant more for taxpayers – to be…

Tax treaty negotiators in 100 countries will be tied up over the next few months with the challenge to evaluate their positions on the BEPS Multilateral Convention (BEPS Convention) with a view to participation in the signing ceremony scheduled for 7 June 2017 in Paris. The many options offered by the BEPS Convention make it…

Brazil is known for its unique transfer pricing legislation. While in most countries the use of comparables is central for the application of the transfer pricing methods, the Brazilian system has conceived the “fixed margins”, as means of ensuring practicability[1]. The Brazilian legislation adopts the predetermined profit margins under the equivalents of the resale and…

The OECD has today published details of the peer review and monitoring process of the Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP) under Action 14 of the BEPS Action Plan. The framework includes the terms of reference for peer review based on the Action 14 final report minimum standards, an assessment methodology for the process and a reporting…

The attribution of profits to a permanent establishment is already a complex issue with at least three separate regimes in the tax treaty context- the OECD Authorised Approach under the 2010 OECD version of Article 7 of the OECD Model, the AOA subject to limitations required by the pre-2010 version and that permitted by Article…

Corporate Social Responsibility (“CSR”) has become one of the top priorities on the Agenda of almost all supranational bodies (OECD, EU, UN) and many jurisdictions. Due to the overall lack of revenues by Countries and the innumerable tax-related leaks (Luxleaks, Panama papers, etc.) along with the recent and ongoing changes within the worldwide international tax…

The OECD BEPS project was kicked off by the observation that the interaction of domestic tax systems sometimes leads to an overlap, resulting in double taxation as well as gaps, which result in an item of income not being taxed anywhere, thus resulting in so called “double non-taxation”. Co-operation among countries historically addressed double taxation…

Model tax treaties do matter. The OECD and UN Models constitute precedent books with standard clauses that contracting states can follow or adapt to suit their particular circumstances. The US Model treaty, in contrast, is a statement of intent. The preamble to the revised 2016 US Model Income Tax Convention released by the US Treasury…

Interest and penalty regimes place a high premium on correctly identifying the existence of a permanent establishment in the territory of a state. The failure to do so often means that there is no reporting to the tax administration by the foreign enterprise by way of registration or filing of returns. This is particularly true…

The Spanish National Court has recently ruled (case no. 182/2012) that a Spanish affiliate of Dell that sold Dell computers in Spain under a commissionaire agreement with Dell Ireland constituted a permanent establishment of the Irish group sales company. The decision is in line with earlier Spanish Supreme Court Decisions in Roche Vitamins Europe SA…